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Tuesday, November 22, 2016

Joshua Partlow’s A
Kingdom of Their Own recaps the Karzai family’s grip on
power in
Afghanistan in the years following the toppling of the Taliban
regime in 2001. American leadership placed
their hopes for
Afghanistan’s democratic success on Hamid Karzai, and Partlow tracks the
complicated
relationship between Hamid and the United States, as well as
Hamid and his own
family over the time of his leadership in Afghanistan.

Kingdom
goes
through great lengths to retell the story of American
involvement in Afghanistan
after the installation of Hamid as leader. American commitment
included
military support and financial resources, as well as business
interests that "helped" to rebuild Afghanistan after years of destruction brought upon
it by war,
Soviet control in the 80’s, and Taliban control in the late
90’s. Those
business interests involved a few of Hamid’s brothers, who
relocated back
to Afghanistan after living in the United States for a time to
help in the
rebuilding process, as well as others who lined their own
pockets for financial
and political gain. Partlow asserts that the United States was fighting not just
insurgent
terrorists but wayward and unethical Afghans and then began
to fight with the Karzai administration over how to manage the
various
conflicts in Afghanistan. In time, the Karzai-US relationship
deteriorated to
the point where the Americans were essentially persona non
grata.

Partlow briefly touches on
Afghanistan’s complicated
tribal history to help preface the geopolitical environment in
the country,
adding additional meat to a thorough entrée of discussion on the
billions of
dollars spent propping up Hamid and (by proxy) his brothers
during a bit more
than a decade. All in all, A Kingdom of Their Own is a
technical, at
times wonky, book. Nonetheless, Partlow’s well-researched work
provides a
critical and needed perspective on the War on Terror’s lesser
known front and
how both sides made many mistakes along the way.

Thursday, November 3, 2016

Robert Matzen’s Mission:
Jimmy Stewart and the Fight for Europe is a detailed
account of the beloved actor's
military service in the Army Air Corps during World War II. Stewart was drafted
and chose to serve, pitching his developing love of flying to
serve his country as part of “The Greatest Generation” of
numerous military
veterans who sacrificed time and their lives in various war
theatres around the
world.

Stewart is a favorite actor in this
household, with It’s a
Wonderful Life one of the films
that endears us to him.Our
appreciation
of Stewart and his down-to-earth demeanor led me to want to
review this book. Matzen did not disappoint, going into great detail to highlight
not just
Stewart’s service in the military but bringing attention to
several stories on
the Allied front as they served under him in England and on
several bombing
missions over Europe. Sprinkled in were accounts from the German
front, specifically
highlighting a German Luftwaffe General’s story as the war
unfolded.

Mission
captures Stewart’s guarded, quiet, personality at its core and
how World War II
changed him and so many other men who fought in it. He was
pained by the
battles and the loss of men under his watch, bearing those scars
for the
duration of his life. Mission
spends
little of its pages devoted to Stewart’s years after World War
II but does a
great job of capturing the essence of Stewart and how he treated
those under
his command with the same respect and decency that would have
made Mr. Smith proud
in Washington.

Tuesday, November 1, 2016

Meg Wolitzer’s The Interestings is one of those books
that get very differing opinions. Some readers say that the characters are unlikeable so they don’t really care
what happens to them very much. It seems
that you either become emotionally invested in these characters or you don’t --
there’s not much of an in-between. I
found The Interestings enthralling
for about 90% of it, and then the unrealistic ending really let me down.

The Interestings are a
group of friends who meet every summer at the Spirit-in-the-Woods camp. It is here where they are free to be
themselves, and when camp ends, it is understood that they are friends for life. Readers see Jules, Ash, Ethan, Jonah, and the
others grow up, get married, become successful (or not), and have children, and since they’ve “known” them since they were teenagers, it’s
not difficult to root them on. Wolitzer
really spends the time developing each one of them, which is why a few events toward the end seemed like quite the cop-out to me.

However, the last few
pages aren’t the be-all and end-all of The
Interestings. The best kind of
realistic fiction novels are when readers can see themselves mirrored in the characters,
and that’s precisely what tends to happen here.